Brigham is "playing a word game," Pinder said. "He hasn't been charged by the board because he's not licensed by the board. But there are criminal investigations going on. We've been in touch with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies."
Brigham, 54, whose two-decade career has been marked by legal and regulatory trouble, owns a Voorhees, N.J.-based chain of abortion clinics called American Women's Services.
Besides New Jersey and Maryland, the company has facilities in Virginia and, until a few months ago, Pennsylvania. Brigham transferred his four Pennsylvania clinics to a newly created company headed by a close relative when Pennsylvania limited his ownership rights for repeatedly employing unlicensed caregivers.
The latest trouble began in August, when an 18-year-old New Jersey woman who was 21 weeks pregnant suffered life-threatening injuries. She filed a complaint with Elkton, Md., police, triggering the ongoing investigations of Brigham and two doctors he employed there.
Authorities in Maryland and New Jersey allege that Brigham inserted rods to dilate patients' cervices, and gave drugs to kill their fetuses and induce labor, all in Voorhees. After leading patients in car caravans to Elkton, he allegedly performed or directed the surgeries to extract the fetuses - even though he has never had a Maryland medical license.
The bistate scheme enabled Brigham to do abortions "that cannot be legally performed" in Voorhees or his other New Jersey clinics because the facilities do not meet the state's safety regulations for outpatient surgery, according to charges filed by the New Jersey attorney general, who is seeking to suspend or revoke Brigham's license.
